Vertigo and MS

A couple of short spells of dizziness this weekend brought back memories of my first discernable MS attack.

Dizziness is a fairly common symptom of multiple sclerosis.Many of us will feel the occasional light headed-ness, a slight bit of disorientation, and a sense of being off-balance when placing one foot in front of the other.Vertigo, however, is a much more severe and significantly rarer (but far from unknown) symptom of MS.

This past weekend I experienced a bit of the former while walking through a parking lot.Luckily, Caryn was at my side and the episodes passed after a couple of moments.Being that we were walking to a live-aboard friend’s boat for an early evening supper made me leery of the evening’s prospects but everything turned out fine (better than that; we had a great evening).

The episode die, however, bring back the memory of my 23rd year when I was bedridden for over a week, having to keep my eyes closed in order not to see the world spinning past my bloodshot eyes.

Crawling on all fours, with my eyes shuttered, from bed to bath in order to vomit (to the point of heart arrhythmia) was a most miserable and humbling experience.The local emergency doctors diagnosed me with Labyrinthitis, an infection of the inner ear which can cause these symptoms (thing is I had none of the other symptoms of the disorder).

The only thing the doctors could do was to prescribe anti-nausea meds and wait until the symptoms passed.

This was obviously a very serious bout with vertigo, but there are folks with MS who experience several levels of vertigo.

I’ve read, in our comments, a few times of others who have suffered episodes of vertigo from mild to severe. I thought, being that we’ve never really devoted a post to this symptom, that it might be a good time to do so.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Trevis Gleason

Trevis L. Gleason is a food journalist and published author, an award-winning chef and culinary instructor who has taught at institutions such as Cornell University, New England Culinary Institute and...read more